[List-Cumbria] Carlisle Patriot, 10 Feb 1816 - Letter - Debtors in Carlisle Gaol

[Petra Mitchinson]

Saturday 10 Feb 1816   (p. 3, col. 3-4)

 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CARLISLE PATRIOT. 

 

SIR,-Having observed a paragraph in the Carlisle Journal of last week, stating that there were then nearly ninety debtors in the
county gaol at Carlisle, the greater part of whom were connected with the agricultural interest, and the same paragraph having also
reference to the crowded state of the various gaols of the Kingdom, I feel it a duty which I owe, not only to the county of
Cumberland, but to the country at large, to give a contradiction to a statement so contrary to truth-there not being last week, or
at the present moment, half the alleged number of debtors in the gaol alluded to; and of those who have the misfortune to be so
unpleasantly situated, a very small proportion of them are connected with the agricultural interest, which in the present depressed
state of the times, speaks much for the county of Cumberland. Had the paragraph above referred to, included the prisoners of all
denominations in its numerical hypothesis, it would have approached much nearer the truth, although in that case the number would
have been considerably exaggerated, the whole of the prisoners only amounting to seventy three, as is made appear in the following
correct statement:-8 farmers, 11 labourers, 2 butchers, 3 yeoman [sic], 2 drovers, 2 innkeepers, 1 annuitant, 2 shopkeepers, 2
mariners, 1 bookbinder, 1 sawyer, 1 auctioneer, 2 tailors, 1 druggist, 1 drysalter, 1 surgeon, 1 saddler, 1 currier, 1
staymaker,-making the total number of debtors 44.-The remainder consist of persons imprisoned for criminal and other offensive
cases,-namely-felony 13; bastardy 8; assaults 2; coining 2; misdemeanor 2; game conviction 1; vagrancy 1, making 29, and the
aggregate, as I before observed, 73 prisoners. 

 

I make the above public, not to gratify any feeling of my own, but to do away, if possible, the unpleasant effect likely to be
produced by such a gross mis-statement as that which has given rise to these observations. 

 

                    I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 

                                      RICHARD JACKSON, Gaoler. 

          Carlisle Gaol, Feb. 6, 1816.

 

 

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